lightning
by LZClotho
Summary: Regina suffers from her hubris in Neverland, and Emma comes to her rescue. Pre-SwanQueen. tumblr prompt: max1603 asked: Lightning


**tumblr prompt: **max1603 asked: Lightning

**Author's Note:** This one's intense, max. Enjoy!

**Summary:** Regina suffers from her hubris in Neverland, and Emma comes to her rescue.

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**Lightning**

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_"I think we can handle a few boys with pointy sticks."_

Regina's own words so confidently uttered a few weeks earlier mocked her now as she hung suspended in mid-air. She had grabbed the Shadow's hands to prevent him from ripping away Emma Swan's soul. Even as she celebrated that momentary victory, she felt a sharp pain sink into her side. She glanced down to see it was a Lost One's arrow, and even as she thought it, the poison sent scorching pain into her veins.

Her last sensible thought before paralysis seized her every muscle was of the being for whom she had stepped into the melee: "Emma!"

"Regina!" Emma had turned at the feel of a wind pushing at her back to see the brunette flying skyward.

She dove for the Lost One raising his bow, but she was unable to prevent the arrow's release. She could only helplessly watch as it pierced Regina's side. Emma screamed an incoherent denial and roundhouse kicked the offending boy.

Regina's body, in ghastly rictus, tumbled groundward. Emma positioned herself beneath the falling woman, lifting her arms and bending her knees to catch and cushion.

"Emma!" Snow turned in her fight to see Emma falling to the ground under a body.

"It's Regina!" Emma was already reversing their positions so Regina lay prone with Emma hovering over her.

"Emma, behind you!" Snow's warning shot Emma's arm out and a blast of magic, much like a funnel of wind, erupted from her palm, slamming her potential attacker full force in the chest and sending him flying backward. With a dull thump his unconscious body hit the ground at the base of a tree.

The awakening of her magic — _think of who it is you want to protect_ — brought Emma's attention to her hand and, beyond it, to the sight of Regina's face, mouth open in a silent scream, and hands as claws with frozen grasping fingers.

Emma wrapped her hands around Regina's throat, the only exposed skin on the overdressed woman aside from her face, but instinctively the only way Emma knew to find Regina's pulse. There was no coming back from death, but to her relief, there was a thready heartbeat under her palms.

"There's no way I'm explaining this to Henry, Regina," Emma muttered. "So shake it the hell off. Now."

Emma felt the magic trying to flow from her into Regina's body and how it repeatedly hit against a barrier. She was thankful for Regina's brief tutelage in a way she had never expressed during the lessons. She closed her eyes and easily sought out with her magic the rippling ebb and flow of the magical poison, finding the low spots, the places where the cascading magic was thinnest, and let her magic drift like smoke under a door, penetrating and breaking the other spell from within.

The unconscious body in her hands jerked in reaction.

Regina returned to consciousness with the sensation of lightning igniting every muscle and nerve. It cast a blinding light behind her eyelids which she could not seem to open. It sparked her muscles and raced along her nerves to her heart until she thought it would explode, over and over again. She desperately wanted to scream, or grit her teeth, or something. Hissing and shrieking pummeled her hearing.

Then, abruptly, Regina was gasping, her body lurched and her eyes were flung open. Emma Swan's face swam in her field of vision, and the woman's hands were pressed upon her throat.

"Gah-k!" Regina choked. The pressure vanished in the next instant.

"Regina!"

Rolling to her side, Regina fought against the urge to throw up as her stomach rolled. She could turn no further, however. Looking down at her immobile hips, she exclaimed in a broken voice, "Miss. Swan. Get. Off."

Emma didn't move from straddling Regina's hips. Regina's gaze lifted to the great distress of her battered muscles to see the blonde's green eyes glassy with tears and a wet smile derpily pulling at the woman's features.

Regina stopped wrestling and fell back against the earth, feeling its cool damp solidity seep into her. With an exhale, she closed her eyes.


End file.
